


Falling To The Ground

by moonlitgleek



Category: Glee
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 14:41:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3772078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlitgleek/pseuds/moonlitgleek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Family means no one gets left behind, or forgotten. But Kitty knows better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling To The Ground

**Author's Note:**

> A\N: This started as a headcanon that grew and took a life of its own. I just started thinking about how there was no interaction between Unique and Kitty in Transitioning and coupled by Kitty’s comment to Rachel about how everyone abandoned her, I started wondering if the newbies lost complete contact with each other after the transfer and how that might have happened, and it kinda spiraled from there.
> 
> Warnings: mention of transphobic bullying and attempts to make a transgender person go back to the closet\put them in a single sex school that does not match their preferred gender, wrong pronouns usage (Sheldon is referred to as she, since it’s Jake’s thoughts and the fic takes place before he comes out.)  
> 

**1\. Marley:**

She is the first to go, the first to fall.

Marley supposes it’s because she was the one who had someone under Sue’s thumb that she could use against her, a leverage that she could hold over Marley and use as a bargaining chip to bring Marley to her knees.

It was such a simple deal. Either her mom takes the job that Sue got her in a high school in Dayton and naturally, transfer Marley there as well. Or she doesn’t, and Sue fires her and they both deal with the ramifications of her mother’s unemployment, for Sue has vowed to make her mother finding another job in Lima near impossible. “She is crazy,” her mom tells her. “She can fire me if she wants, but she can’t stop me from getting another job. Don’t worry, sweetheart, we’re going to be just fine”

Easy words to say, but reality is another matter, as Marley comes to find out. She has no idea how Sue managed it, but the interview her mom manages to get at Carmel gets cancelled not two hours after her mom gets it, the same happening with East Lima High not two days after that, and by the time her mom gets told of the third cancellation in a week, Marley already knows that it is over. Sue has backed them into a corner and the only thing left is for them to choose how they go.

It’s a no brainer for them to choose door number one. They simply could not afford for her mom to be out of work. Marley’s therapy took too much money, money they didn’t have in the first place, and they were barely keeping afloat as it was. Her mom being out of work would put them on the streets.

Marley spends her night in her mother’s arms, both of them crying at the unfairness of it all, but while her mom falls asleep after a while, Marley stays wide awake, trying to not think of how the others would react to her leaving and unable to think of anything but.

She is numb by the time she gets to school the next day. Her mom looks defeated as she tells Sue that she is taking the job in Dayton and is met with a triumphant smile that should anger Marley, but she finds that it doesn’t stir any response in her. She is too tired to care. She has no fight left in her and she just wants to get that day over with. The exhaustion stays with her as she breaks the news that she is leaving to the others and she can’t even muster the energy to explain why. She stays silent as their surprise turn to worry to frustration then finally to anger. She knows that it sounds like she is abandoning them. She never told them about Sue’s ultimatum and even she doesn’t understand why. They would have understood. They would have tried their best to help and maybe it’s that that makes her not tell them. Maybe if they don’t fight, Sue won’t go after them too and she’ll let them be. Maybe she won’t break them like she broke Marley.

She manages to hold onto her detachment in the face of it all. Kitty’s glassy eyes that follow her the whole day. Unique’s steady gaze that feels like it’s reaching to Marley’s very soul. Ryder’s continued pleas to just tell them what’s happening. Jake’s stony silence and stormy eyes that hold as much pain as they do anger. She doesn’t break till she goes to the auditorium at the end of the day only to find Bree blocking her way because the auditorium has been reserved for Cheerios practice and no one was allowed in. She does everything she can to convince Bree to let her in. She only needs five minutes, she just wants to say goodbye to him, but Bree is unmoved and shuts the door in her face.

She runs, stumbling, blinded from the tears in her eyes and only stops when she reaches his tree. She collapses there, crying and crying till there is no tears left in her to shed. She is screaming on the inside and a broken unintelligible apology makes it through her lips as her tears splatter over his name. “I can’t fight her. I’m not strong like you, Finn,” she wants to say, but the words get stuck in her throat. She presses her fingers to her lips then to his name in a silent farewell, and with a last look to the place she has been calling home for the last year, she turns and walks away.

They leave for Dayton the very next day. Marley’s last action before leaving yet another home is to send a warning to Unique that Sue is after them all.

Her new high school is nice enough, she supposes, but honestly, everything feels colorless and tasteless to her right now that she just doesn’t bother. They have a Glee club. She can hear the singing as she walks past one of the room and she sees the sign up sheet taped to the door, but the sound that once brought her such comfort and joy only causes a wave of desperation to wash over her now. It’s a reminder of everything she had, and everything that was ripped away from her.

She races to their new apartment that day and throws everything that remind her of Mckinley and Glee club in a box, the notebook full of her songs being the first thing that gets thrown in. She needs to put this part of her life to rest if she wants to have any hope of moving on with her life. Plus, it’s time for her to face the real world and leave her dreamland behind. No one can ever do to her what Sue did again. She won’t let them. But to do that, she needs to be financially secure, which means a stable reliable job that isn’t as fickle and unpredictable as show biz is. Because for every Rachel Berry and Mercedes Jones that make it a year out of high school, there are hundreds who struggle for years and hundreds more who never make it. And she can’t take that risk. So her songs and her sheet music and pictures of competitions and performances get tossed in a box and sealed shut. She closes the lid on her friends’ smiling faces and takes a shuddering breath, sending a silent apology to them all. Part of her feels like she is betraying them, betraying Finn and all the fighting he did for them, and she barely keeps herself from bursting into tears. She doesn’t want to give up on what she loves, but she is done letting the world make her feel small, and that’s the only way she knows how to prevent it.

That night, she dreams of a little girl standing on an abandoned stage screaming, but no sound is coming out of her mouth. She knows who that little girl is, knows what she is doing to the big dreams that little girl had, but she has been stripped of everything, even her ability to dream.

She walks to school the next day and signs herself up for accounting club.

* * *

 

**2\. Unique:**

The bullying escalates.

That’s just her luck, isn’t it? First she has to come to school knowing that the only place that she felt safe in has been turned into a freaking computer lab, then she loses her best friend not three weeks into the new school year, and now she is being harassed at every corner. She has always known that Mckinley isn’t exactly a paradise of acceptance but this is a little ridiculous. She gets locker checked on a nearly daily basis. She finds her locker and car sprayed with transphobic slurs and hateful names more than once. And that’s not to mention the rude notes she keeps finding in her locker. It’s like the entirety of Mckinley is out to get her all of a sudden. Jake and Ryder do their best to protect her, and Kitty puts the wrath of god in the Cheerios after one of them tries to harass Unique at lunch, but they can only do so much, and after Jake gets into his third fight in a week, she stops telling them about a great deal of what’s happening to her. She doesn’t want any of them getting into trouble for her sake and she definitely doesn’t want to Sue getting more ammo to use against them.

The thought that Sue is behind what’s happening to her enters her mind sometimes but she dismisses it. Because Sue takes action every single time. She assigns detentions and suspends the culprits whenever they are caught, and makes sure Unique’s locker gets repainted as quickly as possible. She gives a long ass speech about acceptance and tolerance during the pep rally and assures Unique’s parents that she is going to do everything in her power to keep their daughter safe. It confuses the hell out of Unique actually. Because - since when does Sue care about her well being or about her feeling safe at school? And since when does she address her as a girl for that matter?

It’s only when she gets called into Sue’s office to find her parents waiting for her and sees Sue give an Oscar worthy performance as she admits that her efforts to protect Unique are not enough, and will never be enough and that she is afraid for her, that Unique gets it. She should have seen it coming, to be honest. Sue played that exact same game before to prevent her from playing Rizzo and just like the last time, her parents eat it up. Her protests fall on deaf ears as the conversation goes on and words like ‘zero tolerance bullying policy’ get tossed around but it’s not until Sue whips out some brochures that Unique realizes that they are actually talking about getting her out of Mckinley. Her anger builds as her parents shake Sue’s hand and thank her for having the courage to be this frank with them and for caring about their child, and she readies herself for a fight. She will not leave Mckinley. She will not leave her friends. No way is she letting Sue do this to her.

But as they get home and her argument with her parents gets more heated, she realizes that it’s far worse than she imagined. Because she is not currently fighting for her right to choose which school she attends, she is fighting for her right to be who she is. Because her parents are talking about _Dalton_.

Shaking, she questions them about whether they know that Dalton is a single sex school, an all _boys_ school and horror twists her insides when she realizes that they do know. They give her a long speech about how they support her and her choices, but her insistence on being Unique is jeopardizing her life, and they have to protect her, even if she hates them for it. She screams at them, she screams and cries and is almost hysterical when she tells them that she can’t go back to being Wade. She won’t. She is Unique and she won’t be anyone but Unique. But they inform her that they have already made their decision and already started the transfer process. Her mom tries to console her by bringing up the Warblers and how she’d have a Glee club again but Unique can’t hear her over the rush of blood in her ears.

Not gonna happen, she decides. She shreds her Dalton uniform when it arrives and absolutely refuses to get out of bed on her first day, and gets promptly grounded for her troubles. Her parents take away her phone and her computer and she has no way to reach Kitty or Jake or Ryder. It’s hell for her, being trapped in a battle of wills with her parents because she refuses to give up her right to be. They reach a compromise eventually when they find a co-ed school that has a zero tolerance policy, but not before she goes through a period of homeschooling. In the midst of the constant fighting, she realizes that she hasn’t been in contact with anyone from her Mckinley world for close to a month and tries to rectify it. But after several attempts in which she keeps getting sent to voice mail (Kitty), is met by a line busy dial tone every single time (Ryder) and is told that the line has been disconnected (Jake), she gives up. She is barely hanging on and she honestly can’t afford to keep banging her head against a wall trying to reach them. So she lets go, for her own sanity.

She pours herself in her studies, wanting this year to end already so that she’d be free of Ohio and her parents’ suffocating and restricting overprotectiveness. She finds solace in an Ohio- based transgender support group she finds online and it’s in one of their meetings that she sings again and is delighted to hear them backing her up. They are not her New Directions, but they are another type of community that carry her the rest of the year.

When she graduates, NYADA acceptance letter in hand, she takes off for NY and doesn’t look back.

* * *

 

**3\. Jake.**

In retrospect, he knows he has given himself up on a silver platter for Sue to hang. But in his defense, he has been protecting a friend.

.....Okay, so the fights he had gotten into to protect Unique might have been just been a fraction of his total fighting count but he had been having the worst month of his life and he really had no patience for the juvenile remarks his jerks of classmates have decided to throw at him with renewed vigor. His short temper kept getting the best of him and honestly, there were times where he’d almost lost his sense of reality. Where he’d be already in the middle of a fight and throwing punches before his brain caught up on what he was doing and he only came to realize it as Ryder or Coach Beiste dragged him off whoever he was fighting this time.

But not Will. Never Will, who Jake barely sees nowadays. And he feels the resentment that has been growing in him since last year take a firmer hold of him.

He is angry at everything and everyone. He feels like he is losing himself and it terrifies him, but he has no way to stop it. Doesn’t even know if he can. He hasn’t been okay for a long long time, ever since Finn, maybe even before that, and he keeps wishing that someone would notice and help him, but no one does and it cuts him deeper than anything he could have imagined. Everyone is stuck on the image they have of him and on who they think he is that they take his actions as a inherent part of his character. No one sees that he is coming apart at the seams, has been for a long time, and no one bothers to help, or even check if he needs help.

Well, that’s not true. One person does but she is so entwined with Puck that he does what he does best when he is hurt, he lashes out. Because he is not Puck and Coach Beiste keeps talking about Puck and he can’t do this anymore. Can’t be a surrogate someone. Everyone treated him like he was his brother from the get go and he’d let them, had even behaved like Puck at the beginning because it was easier and because it gave him a resemblance of control and protection, but even when he tried to not be Puck and to just be himself, no one really saw him. They still saw Puck in him. They still saw Puck’s motives and Puck’s reasons and Puck’s struggles in Jake’s own actions.

Then Puck punished him for not being Finn. Jake lost his brother the same day he lost Finn. But he couldn’t be Finn for Puck. Just like he couldn’t be Marley’s perfect boyfriend. Just like he couldn’t be Puck. He is Jake. A screw up, a mess, a disappointment. But he is who he is. Just Jake.

He never knew that his throwaway line to Will Shuester would become the bane of his existence. That he’d be fighting for people to see him, to accept him, let downs and all, and not who they wished he’d be or who they saw in him or who they thought he was. And it’s not like all these people didn’t screw up just as badly as he did. Why do they get second chances while he gets erased in favor of some fixed idea people have about him?

Yeah, his explosion was a long time coming, and it was only sped along by Marley’s sudden and unexplained disappearance that was just the last straw for his already fraught hold.

Jake snapped. And Sue Sylvester was right there waiting for the opportunity he so easily provided her with.

She struck with the swiftness of a practiced predator, ending the whole thing rather quickly. His mom getting called in to discuss his constant altercations with his classmates. Sue talking about how he was just a step away from complete expulsion. The horror on his mom’s face that made Jake’s throat close up. And finally, the casual remark about how Sue was willing to take off the detentions and all evidence of Jake’s actions off his record, but only if he leaves Mckinley right away because she can’t have a bad apple amongst her students. The desire to laugh hit him at that. Was she going to make the people who made Unique’s life a living hell over the past few weeks transfer as well or would that not serve her plans?

He felt like he had lost the ability to speak as he watched his mom endure Sue’s cruel remarks about him ending up in juvie that culminates with the advice that he be put in military school, citing how the military has done wonders for his brother. His mom was silent. She had nothing to respond with. He had put a loaded gun in Sue’s hand and she was happily using it against him and his mom.

Nothing is said as Sue finishes the paper work needed for his transfer and hands everything to his mom. They are at the door when his mom turns to Sue, saying that while she’d never try to excuse Jake’s actions, any self respecting educator would try to find out why a student was acting out and try to help him instead of writing him off as a lost case at the first given opportunity and getting rid of him so he’d be someone else’s problem. Jake’s heart floods with love for her, the one person who accepts him like he is and the only person to fight for him in a long time.

The day after Unique’s parents take her out of Mckinley, Jake Puckerman transfers out. He waits for the calls, waits for Ryder and Kitty to get wind of what happened and reach out to him, but neither do, and the part inside of him that still connects him to Mckinley and that carried him through all the abandonment, from Puck to Will to the graduates, dies. Did any of them even care about him?

So maybe it’s for the best that he left. No one saw him at Mckinley. No one fought for him. They didn’t deem him important enough to and he, in turn, isn’t going to fight for them anymore. He deletes his Facebook and changes his number that day. He wants no part of that history, no part of them. They didn’t care about him so why should he care about them?

It’s time for a fresh start.

* * *

 

**4\. Ryder:**

East Lima High has a better academic track record.

That’s why Ryder found himself being dragged away from the only friend he has left and forced to go to a school that is even worse than Mckinley. At least the Mckinley student body voted for a gay president last year, something that Ryder knows that the students at East Lima High will never do after less than two weeks of being there. But hey, it’s academically better than Mckinley and that was the best selling pitch Sue could ever make to his dad when he came to school, worried about his son’s grades slipping.

Well, excuse him for being affected by the fact that he lost three friends in about a month and that he knows that the principal is out to get him and his only remaining friend.

He was floundering. He busted his ass off trying to reach Unique and Marley, to understand why they gave up that easily, to no avail. So Sue is after them. Okay. Fine. But it’s not like she can actually force them to leave Mckinley if they don’t want to. She doesn’t have that kind of power, right?

Wrong. He finds out just how wrong when he sees his father catch on the subtle hints that Sue kept throwing about how understaffed Mckinley is and how she hopes to bring the school’s academic achievement to that of East Lima High’s. Her calculated comment about how they had a Spanish teacher who couldn’t speak Spanish employed for years is the last straw. Ryder can pinpoint the exact moment his dad made his decision.

He doesn’t try to convince his father otherwise. What’s the point? Marley left. Unique left. Jake left. And Kitty... well, she looks like her light has gone out. She is subdued and quiet, and it’s like the person he knows is gone and he gets suffocated every time he sees her picking at her food. He doesn’t like to think about it, but he admits to himself that he wasn’t “dragged away” from Mckinley. He accepted his father’s decision, and rather quickly at that, because he wanted an escape. He was dying at Mckinley, haunted by all the ghosts that lurks there, including the ghost of who Kitty once was. He was powerless. He couldn’t help her, just like he couldn’t help Marley or Unique or Jake. He was powerless and he knew it and hated it. So he ran away. He took the out that his father offered him.

He does tell Kitty before he leaves. He doesn’t want to vanish on her like the others, and her silence as she looks at him with the most tired eyes he has ever seen on her stabs at his heart more than a million reprimands or accusations ever could. The way she looks as he leaves her, small and silent, with her books clutched tightly against her chest like a sort of shield, will forever be ingrained in his mind, etched on the inside of his retinas.

He shoves everything to the side after he leaves, blocks all notifications from all of them, including the graduates who he hasn’t heard from in months. He runs away from the guilt just like he runs away from the ghosts. He feels like he is running away from himself too.

East Lima High doesn’t have a Glee club, not that he would join if they did have one. His grades improve a bit but only because he is using studying as another method of escape. He forbids himself from thinking about Mckinley or about his friends. About Glee club and the only people he trusted enough to tell them his darkest secret. He wonders if his parents think that this is better, for him to be doing better academically but floating aimlessly in every other aspect of his life. His mother’s worried eyes that follow him around tells him otherwise.

The drop is sudden and unexpected. He overhears a girl in his English class complain about the lack of arts in their school and mentions something about stupid sexists rules that won’t allow her to join his father and uncle’s Glee club because she is a girl. Ryder isn’t paying much attention till she says that her parents are suing Dalton Academy so she’d be able to go there and join the Warblers. And suddenly, he is with Jake in the Mckinley auditorium, huddled around a computer watching Gangnam Style and talking about how they were going to kick the Warblers’ asses. And it’s the start of a flood of memories that steamroll over him and leave him with a deep sense of shame.

He shouldn’t have abandoned Kitty. He had a choice. He could have convinced his dad to let him stay. He still doesn’t know how Sue made the others leave but from what he saw, he is sure that she used something against them to force them to, manipulated them till they were right were she wanted. That wasn’t the case with him. And even if it was, he still should have fought. He should have checked on the girls and made sure they were safe. Even if it took ages for them to respond, he should have persisted. He should have kept in touch with Jake. He knew that Jake was already on a slippery slope before Sue forced them out and that added hit must have toppled him completely, but he did nothing. Didn’t even try to call him after he learned of his transfer. He was terrified that he’d be met with silence from Jake, just like he was met by silence from Marley and Unique, so he didn’t try. He didn’t fight Sue. He didn’t fight for his friends. He barricaded himself in and let the world outside roll without him.

He is hit with all the worry he has pushed aside for so long. Are they okay? Are they safe? Do they have anyone to turn to? He is dying to call them but he doesn’t know how he can do it when he has abandoned them so effectively. He has no idea how to bridge the gap.

He has dropped the ball so spectacularly and he doubts that having good hands will be enough this time.

* * *

 

**5\. Kitty.**

And then there was one.

Nothing registers at the beginning and Kitty falls into a stupor; the hits too rapid and too close for her to process one loss before being hit with another. Losing Unique and Jake at the same time almost breaks her and by the time Ryder leaves, she is just exhausted. She can’t even find it in herself to be angry at him when he informs her of his departure. She has lost everyone who has meant something to her at Mckinley in under two months, and she doesn’t understand the motive behind it and it’s that that knocks her off her feet the most. She needs to make sense of what happened before she can ever hope to adapt to a Mckinley that has lost what makes it bearable. She bribes Becky and finds out exactly how Sue managed to manipulate and play and exploit every single one of her friends. She finds out that she fired Marley’s mom and was behind the insane amount of hate that got aimed at Unique. She even made some of the football players provoke Jake on purpose so that he’d get in trouble. And it was all for one thing. Sue wanted to erase any trace of the arts at Mckinley and she didn’t want anyone who would try to fight her over it, or show the powers that be, by example, how much the arts can change lives. And by purging them all out of Mckinley, she also ensured that the graduates lose their link to the school. Not that this part was necessary, Kitty thinks bitterly, the graduates forgot about them all on their own.

This has got to be the most cruel and senseless thing that Kitty has ever witnessed Sue doing, but it also puts things in perspective for her to learn that Sue was concerned about what a bunch of high school kids would do to her plans.

It’s only then that Kitty realizes that it’s not that hard to beat Sue Sylvester, and Kitty plans on it.

She knows that Sue won’t try to force her out like she did with the others. No, she is too smart for that. She knows that Kitty is the best dancer on the squad and that she is the one who has been coming up with their new routines, which makes her valuable for Sue. Sure, Bree is just as good of a dancer but Bree can’t come up with a cheer routine that comes even close to what Kitty comes up with. Sue wants to win and Kitty is her best chance at getting yet another trophy. Plus, Bree is a senior and having Kitty at Mckinley would save Sue the trouble of finding a new Head Bitch, like she likes to call it.

Oh, Kitty was definitely going to give her a Head Bitch.

Rule #1 in dealing with Kitty Wilde: don’t mess with a member of her family, and Sue messed with all of them. Kitty initially thinks of giving Sue a taste of her own medicine by sabotaging the Cheerios from the inside and watching them crumble, but she quickly rejects the idea and reprimands herself for even thinking it. Because she’d be punishing the Cheerios before she’d be punishing Sue with that and the Kitty that didn’t care about collateral damage as long as she got to her goal was long gone. She wants to get back at Sue but she won’t do it at the expense of other people and most importantly, not at the expense of herself. She refuses to lose herself in her anger or her desire to get even with Sue. She worked too hard to get where she is now to allow Sue the satisfaction of watching her regress into the angry mean person she was before. Plus, regressing to that person would be such a betrayal to her friends and to the family they built together, a betrayal to Finn who was the first person in this school to be willing to bet on her and to give her a chance.

Carole Hudson once said that they were Finn’s legacy. There is only her now and she will not let his legacy be destruction. If she wants to beat Sue, she’ll have to do it on her own terms, not Sue’s. Never Sue’s.

She watches as Mckinley loses life, as all traces of what they have accomplished in Glee club gets erased, and she bids her time, waiting for an opportunity to present itself so she’d strike at Sue. She makes it very clear to Sue that she is not one of her own. Sue has nothing on her. She can’t threaten her and she can’t control her because Kitty simply has nothing else to lose. Sue is the one who needs something from Kitty, not the other way around. Kitty is defiant but her defiance is not enough to make a dent in the prison that Sue has turned Mckinley into.

Running into Jake at the dance studio should have been amazing, but it turns out to be another hit for Kitty. Jake is different. He is not the Jake she knows. He acts like they barely know each other and he is extremely passive aggressive throughout the whole session. She confronts him afterwards and is taken back by how he attacks her. He is angry, which she thinks is both understandable and justified, but she never expected that anger to be directed at her. And her anger bubbles to the surface in response. They sure still know how to rile each other up.

It’s not pretty. They snap and tear at each other as their frustration comes bleeding out, and it’s the first time Kitty becomes aware of how angry she is at all of them and how hurt she is that they cut her out of their lives. It’s not only the graduates she is mad it, it’s them too. Marley and Unique and Jake and Ryder. She screams at Jake that just because she wasn’t forced to leave Mckinley doesn’t mean that she is fine. She is the one who was left amongst the rubble of her destroyed home. She is the one who was left to face Sue’s hell and watch as the place that was once a home to her turned into a prison, trapping her in and suffocating her. They left her behind, all of them.

Jake storms out and she deflates, the anger draining out of her to be replaced by unimaginable pain. That’s not how she pictured her reunion with any of them going. She cries for the first time that day. She cries for the pain that Marley and Unique and Jake and Ryder went through, and she cries for the pain that they put her through. She mourns the family she lost and the friends that abandoned her.

Family means no one gets left behind - or forgotten. But Kitty knows better.


End file.
